Category Archives: Science

Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to see Scotland move up the European organ donor league, in which it is performing badly, and is sympathetic to calls for a “presumed consent” system on the part of donors.

To see how you can become an organ donor see the O Project’s Life After Death campaign.

The good news as reported by Ekklesia is that in England “after a number of requests from teaching unions and civic bodies, including the Christian think-tank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association, the UK Department of Children, Schools, and Families has issued guidance for teachers uncertain whether and how to discuss creationism – which is rejected by both scientists and theologians as lacking factual and theoretical value.

A statement on Teachernet, a government website, states that “Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the National Curriculum for science” and describes “intelligent design” as “a creationist belief” that “is sometimes erroneously advanced as scientific theory but has no underpinning scientific principles or explanations supporting it and it is not accepted by the international scientific community.”

Not only is it good news that creationism is being clearly put in its place but it is also a demonstation of how religious and non-religious bodies can work together on common causes. Archbishop of canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has also described creationism as “a category mistake” in religious thought.

This week’s New Scientist contains an account of a symposium entitled “Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival” hosted by the Science Network, a science-promoting coalition of scientists and media professionals convening at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Some of the leading practitioners of modern science, many of them vocal atheists, were gathered last week in La Jolla, California to address three questions. Should science do away with religion? What would science put in religion’s place? And can we be good without God? You can read the full article here for a fee.